Fallen Eagle Chapter 88: Quick Work

2nd Week of May, 1460

There was no duty in all the world as dull as the night watch.

When Flaviano had joined La Compagnia del Falcone Nero, he had imagined sothing very different for himself. He had pictured battle lines, banners snapping in the wind, n shouting his na after so brave deed. He had imagined sharing in plunder, earning coin, and making enough of a na for himself that one day so lord might look at him and see a knight in the making.

Instead, he should have imagined being bored senseless staring at dark shapes for hours on end, with only grumpy old n as company.

He had not even joined by choice. His own lord was a third son with no great inheritance to wait for, only ambition and dreams of wealth sowhere far away. Flaviano had sworn to follow him unto death, and that oath had dragged him to the arse end of nowhere, where they now fought fellow Christians over tariffs, ports, and various other stupid, boring things. Now he saw the reason his father had cursed rchants as the root of all evil. He'd also cursed him as a fool for joining to beco a rcenary.

He was starting to think he was right.

A soldier spent far less ti fighting than he had once believed. Even training did not fill much of the day. Most of it was waiting, marching, hauling things, or, yes, standing still in the cold. He couldn’t even sit or slouch! He had to stand with his back straight, like so little puppet with a stick up his ass.

He had deduced that must have been why so many of the veterans had gotten to be so mad at life. After he had made that joke within earshot of an old veteran, they’d made sure to spread their misery, and he had found himself assigned to every sentry duty since.

At least there was one half-decent part to the job.

“Who’s a good boy? You are,” Flaviano pitched his voice high and happy, scratching the great mastiff beneath the jaw. Ferro leaned into his hand at once, heavy head pressing against him with the kind of affection Flaviano found endearing.

“Get the boy off the mutt,” the handler said. “We have to make the next post before the whole rotation goes crooked.”

“Stop using that damned woman’s voice,” the sergeant snapped. He was a sour, grey-faced man with breath like sothing left too long in a barrel. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Flaviano let his hand fall and shot him a glare. The sergeant only snorted.

“Keep looking at like that and I’ll leave you in the dark till dawn every night we’re here, boy.”

There was such ugly delight in the man’s face that Flaviano believed him. He looked away before he said sothing that would earn him exactly that.

“Co along, Ferro.” The handler tugged the leash.

The dog did not move.

He stood rigid, staring into the black beyond the torchlight.

“Ferro,” the handler said again, sharper now.

Flaviano saw the beast’s beady eyes focused intently on the blackness as if so danger approached, his posture tense, his tail wagging. “Is he seeing sothing?” He asked.

“He slls better than he sees in this cursed dark,” the handler said.

Ferro barked, deep and sudden, and every man there stiffened.

“What is it?” the sergeant asked.

“No clue. Could be a wolf. Could be scouts. Could be anything.”

“On guard!” the sergeant mimicked the stout dog, barking his n into place.

Flaviano welcod it, a chance of danger was a thousand tis better than slowly dying of boredom. Flaviano straightened, hand tightening around his weapon as he peered outward. The dark seed to stretch on forever, empty and still.

Nothing happened.

“Did the mutt sound a false alarm?” one of the n snapped, the tenseness of the situation leaving him impatient.

“Maybe,” the handler muttered. “Or whatever it is is taking its ti coming closer.” Ferro barked again, louder this ti, as if to agree.

“There,” one of the n said suddenly, pointing. “Sothing’s there.”

Flaviano narrowed his eyes, at first he saw nothing but shifting dark. Then a shape pulled itself loose from it. It looked to be a man, stumbling forward one slow step at a ti.

As he ca nearer, the torchlight began to catch on him, making details hidden in the dark more visible.

“He’s injured!” Flaviano called, already half a step into the dark.

“Stay back!” the sergeant caught him before he could race to the man’s rescue.

“But sir-”

“It could be a ploy by those damn sheep herders. Stay in your fucking spot and do not move.”

Flaviano ground his teeth and obeyed, though every part of him wanted to go forward. The figure kept dragging itself nearer, movents all slow and crooked. As it ca closer, the torchlight began to catch on him in broken pieces. He wore only a stained undertunic, fine enough to mark him as no peasant, although it was a ruin of mud, sweat, and what looked horribly like blood. In one hand he clutched a thick stick, using it to shove himself onward, limping at his right side. The only piece of armour left on him was a closed helt still covering his face.

“State your business and allegiance!” the sergeant called.

Any fool could already see the man was Italian from the cut of his clothing and gear.

“Please,” the man rasped. “Help.”

He took another step, then stopped short when the guards drew their swords.

“Who are you?” the sergeant demanded.

“Fabrizio, of house Nagli,” the man said, his voice thin and raw.

A few of the older soldiers glanced at one another, but in a host of sixteen hundred n a na ant little. Flaviano knew none of them saw enough of each other to rember every face or na.

“Which way does the wind blow?” the sergeant asked out of the blue. It was the pass word to enter camp, sothing only a true Genoese soldier would know, as they changed it daily.

“I don’t know,” the man said weakly. “I’ve been gone three days. The Goths captured in our last assault on their south side.”

The Sergeant stared him down, as if considering if he believed him.

“Then, how does the creek sing?” It was the password for three days past, when the man claid to have been captured.

The man swayed where he stood. “Weak, and slow, and high.”

The sergeant studied him for a long mont. The stranger was shivering now, though the night was not so cold as to explain it.

“Co closer,” the sergeant said at last. “Hands where I can see them.”

The man obeyed, edging forward with all the strength of soone already half-fallen.

“Take off your helt.”

He hesitated.

“I can’t,” he said so quietly they nearly did not hear him.

“I won’t ask twice.”

The sergeant and the others moved in around him at once. Their posture changed with it, going hard and ugly.

“Per favore,” the man whispered. “It is stuck.”

Stuck? Flaviano thought, frowning. How could a helt get stuck?

“Get it off him,” the sergeant ordered, not brokering any further nonsense.

The n seized the stranger before he could do more than weakly protest. He had no strength left to fight them. The handler gripped the underside of the helt and pulled.

“No, no, no,” the man begged, weakly trying to move away, “please-AAAAAAAGH!”

It did not sound like a man’s scream. It was too high, too raw, too full of pain. Flaviano heard sothing wet tear with the tal, and the helt ca free.

What lay beneath made his stomach turn.

The man’s face was a ruin of burns and scar tissue, skin twisted and shiny in places, dark in others, with angry red marks running across it like fresh brands. One eye was swollen nearly shut. The other stared wide and wild. He wailed as the n forced him down, and more than one of them nearly lost hold of him in sheer shock.

“Mio Dio,” sobody whispered.

Flaviano could only stare. His mouth had gone dry.

“How did this happen?” he asked before he could stop himself.

The handler looked down at the writhing man with open disgust. “What do you think happens when you’re captured in war, boy?” He did not finish the thought. He did not need to. “They got whatever answers they needed out of him. By whatever ans necessary.”

A cold feeling ran through Flaviano. He had heard n talk of torture before in the careless way soldiers talked about ugly things, but this was different. This was not talk. This was a man left half-destroyed and sohow still walking.

All around him, n were crossing themselves.

“Why would they just allow him to leave?” Flaviano asked tentatively. He couldn’t deny there was a slight shake to his voice. He lay there, staring at the broken man lying at his feet - a testant to the carnage of war. This wasn’t a deadly blow struck in the heat of battle, but the cold-blooded torture of another man. Flaviano was desperate to make sense of this cruelty.

“Because they wanted to send a ssage.” He’d never heard the sergeant’s tone that subdued. The quiet that followed - and the hollow looks of the witnesses - told Flaviano the ssage had been sent.

Flaviano turned on his superior, desperate to move, act, do sothing - anything. “He needs the surgeon.” He practically demanded of the sergeant.

The sergeant answered back with a grim nod. “Carry him to the main camp.”

They lifted Fabrizio with as much care as they could manage and set him onto a stretcher. Even that seed to hurt him. Low sounds kept slipping from his throat as they moved, the sort a man made when he had no strength left for proper cries.

The walk back ant passing through the cleared roads connecting their fortifications. The great plateau the Theodorans hid themselves upon was too large for a single walled ring, so the company had been forced to erect small forts all around its length, linked by ditches, patrol tracks, and rough timberworks. Flaviano had never seen work on such a scale. It was impressive enough in the daylight, but at night it felt like moving through the entrails of so massive wooden beast.

At each line the sentries challenged them, then stood aside once they saw what they carried.

The journey was spent in oppressive silence, interspersed only by the occasional moans from their injured comrade. It was as if the n were too unnerved to speak.

Fabrizio stirred on the stretcher “How far away…are we?” He whispered through the cloth they’d placed atop his face.

“Not far,” Flaviano was quick to reassure him, “the main camp is nearly upon us.”

They passed the last ring of guards and entered the heart of the camp, where the larger tents of the officers and surgeons stood in ordered rows. Under the better light, Flaviano saw more of the man they carried, and wished he had not. The left leg beneath the ruined clothing looked wrong, stiff in places where it should bend, with old scars running over it like pale cords beneath the gri. The sight of it made his jaw tighten.

Bastardi, he thought. May God judge every last Theodoran who laid hands on him.

They brought Fabrizio into a tent and laid him on a cot. One of the n was sent running for the surgeon. The sergeant went to fetch an officer, though not before fixing him in place with a look.

“Stay here. Keep watch over him.”

Flaviano nodded, his throat bobbing nervously.

The others filed out, leaving him alone with the wounded man and the low hiss of a lamp. For a mont there was only the sound of Fabrizio’s breathing, ragged but steady.

“You’ll be alright, sir,” Flaviano said, though he wasn’t sure if he believed it. “The surgeon will be here soon.”

“Grazie.” Flaviano noticed that the man had turned.

In the fuller light, sothing about him changed.

What Flaviano had taken for fresh burns looked strangely wrong now. The redness sat badly on the skin, too sared, too uneven. It was as though sothing old had been covered over to look rawer than it was. The marks did not sit naturally on the face. And the face itself...

Flaviano frowned.

The jaw was too smooth. The eyes too sharp at the corners. He did not look properly like the man he had seed in the dark.

He almost looked Greek.

A cold prickle ran down Flaviano’s back.

Then he saw the eyes properly.

The weak confusion was gone. So was the pain. What stared back at him now was flat and empty and watchful, like a wolf that had finally stopped pretending to limp.

Flaviano’s own eyes widened. “What-”

He never finished.

A sharp pain struck beneath his chin. For a heartbeat he did not understand it. Then warmth poured suddenly down his neck, thick and wet, and his thoughts lurched to catch up with what had already been done.

His throat.

The man moved with terrible speed for soone who had seed half-dead monts before. One hard hand clamped over Flaviano’s mouth and nose before he could cry out. The other held him fast. Flaviano thrashed, tried to wrench himself free, tried to breathe, but the grip on him was iron.

He could sll sweat, old leather, and blood. His own blood.

Panic roared through him. He clawed at the man’s wrist, kicked against the ground, tried with all his strength to pull away, but it was no use. Fabrizio only drew him closer, lowering him with dreadful calm as the tent began to spin.

His vision dimd at the edges.

The last thing Flaviano saw was that terrible face above him, no longer suffering, no longer weak, but cold and intent.

Then the world narrowed into a spreading black, and with one last bitter flicker of thought, Flaviano understood the cruel joke of it.

He was dying at the watch, staring into the dark.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Gennadios despised working quickly.

Quick was a good way to leave a job half finished. Quick was half a step towards a sloppy finish. But he had to be quick to make sure the armour he was stealing off the Italian boy didn’t get drenched in his blood.

He tore the gear off the boy with brisk, efficient motions, not caring for the way the body twitched or the wet choking sounds that still tried to force their way up through the slit throat. The lad was finished. Whether he bled out in monts or a little longer after made no difference worth considering. What mattered was speed, and leaving as little trace on his disguise as possible.

Within barely five minutes, Gennadios had stripped what he needed, and stepped back out of the tent. He walked outside at a casual pace, no limp in his stride, no trembling weakness to his movent, and a helt donned over his ‘injured’ face.

Faking weakness, and hiding it, were two of the most important tools of the trade.

One of the first lessons he’d been taught was simple: People saw what they wished to see, and if you could direct that wish, you had already won their mind.

The Genoese saw a broken captive because hating the n you were being sent to kill was easier than thinking they were cleverer than you. Being underestimated was one of the finest advantages a man could possess. And because of that, they had left him alone with a gullible boy and a closed patch of canvas.

Amateurs died from lacking skill. Professionals died from lacking imagination.

Gennadios had never intended to suffer either fault. He had spent years teaching his body useful falsehoods. It helped that n were absurdly easy to fool when the performance gave them what they already expected.

The camp around him remained ignorant of the murder for now, but that wouldn’t last. He didn’t hurry, though, walking at an unhurried pace through the torchlit lanes. He hated rushing a job.

As he moved, he let his eyes wander. Supply stacks. Wagon placents. Sentry intervals. Timber stacks. Weapons stockpiles. He catalogued them all. Not because that was what he’d been sent to do, but because any true professional wouldn’t settle for anything but thoroughness.

One of the things that struck him the most was the sll. Gennadios had never prized hygiene in his intelligence operations before, but that Sideris boy had shown him its worth to an army, and Gennadios wasn’t proud enough to ignore it.

The Genoese had latrines, but they were too near the tents, and not properly covered by the sll of it. It would only worsen with the rain.

Mangup lood above the dark like a fixed hand pointing the way. That made orientation simple enough. He only had to keep moving toward the gate that faced the plateau, and trust that discovery had not yet begun behind him.

Any mont now they would enter the tent and find a warm naked corpse on the ground, a slit throat, and a missing invalid. That would stir the camp quickly enough.

So he chose the most direct route.

At the gate, two soldiers and a sergeant stood watch beneath the wavering light of a torch basket. Gennadios approached with just enough confidence to seem ordinary.

“Buona sera a voi,” he called, his rasp gone, voice sharp and haughty, the natural match to the brand of Italian the Company spoke.

“Buona sera,” the sergeant answered.

“I’m to make the rounds with the inner patrols,” Gennadios said, offering the crisp salute the Italian condottieri favored. The Compagnia del Falcone Nero traced its roots to Apulia, not Liguria. To salute or speak like a Genoese here would have been the sort of mistake only a fool made once.

Details mattered, and Gennadios had always prided himself on excelling in those.

“Alone?” The sergeant questioned, one brow raised.

“I am late to my patrol, sergeant,” Gennadios said, adding the faintest note of embarrassnt. He scratched at the side of his helt as if ashad to admit it.

“And that is not my problem.” Ca the harsh reply, no doubt so attempt at corralling the rcenaries into what they called discipline.

Gennadios was unperturbed; when is ca to condottieri, there was often an easy solution to most issues.

“I understand, sergeant,” Gennadios said. “But I am already in trouble with my condottiero, ssere. Perhaps you might overlook it this once.” As he spoke, he flashed the small coins he’d smuggled in his mouth, just enough to show the glint of two silver grossi in the torchlight.

The sergeant’s face practically shone with greed. He took the pouch with a quick, almost modest motion, as if embarrassed by his own corruption rather than eager for it. The Italians had all manner of ridiculous proprieties around bribery. One was expected to pretend reluctance even while accepting gladly, as though the false piety sohow improved the act.

“Go on then,” the sergeant grunted. “And be quick about it. If one of the monkeys shoots you in the dark, I won’t co looking.”

Gennadios bowed his head just enough. “My thanks.”

And with that, he simply passed through the gate and walked out into the night.

Not straight toward Mangup, of course. That would have been the sort of mistake a novice would make.

Gennadios moved instead along the circumference of the patrol line, angling his course so that he seed rely another sentry keeping to his assigned circuit. When he crossed paths with a patrol moving the other way, he marked their direction at once and understood the pattern of the nearest watch rotation. After that, it beca a simple matter of timing. He only needed to choose the right mont to slip inward toward the fortress.

Already, he could hear the disturbance rising behind him from the Genoese camp. They must have found the body, and would throw up a storm as if a kicked hornet's nest.

Gennadios made for the fortress in a low, careful walk that kept him beneath easy notice without sacrificing control. Not at a sprint, as so nervous amateur might have done.

Rushing was a vulgar habit that narrowed judgnt, invited noise, and was the first option for n who couldn’t think things through.

That was why he hated working quickly.

Most n might have been dragged from sleep by the three hurried knocks at his study door. Zeno, however, was still awake, seated at his desk with a book open beneath the lamplight.

His duties had long accustod him to late hours, and he had never understood the common weakness for sleeping eight full hours like so dull-witted ox after ploughing. He had always found half that amount more than sufficient, and had yet to detect any decline in his faculties for it.

Tonight, in any case, he had ample reason to remain awake.

“Yes?” he said, setting down the volu he had been reading.

With the recent elevation of his stature, he had secured access to the more restricted works of the keep’s library, and had been making profitable use of it. The book before him concerned older censuses of the Principality, dry material by ordinary standards, but not to a mind capable of recognizing the uses of administrative knowledge. It paid to be forewarned. More importantly, there was a very crucial use he planned to make of this particular knowledge.

“Gennadios has arrived at the main gate,” His attendant’s voice was young and breathless, frayed with fatigue Zeno could detect even beyond the closed door. “He says he bears a ssage from the army.”

Zeno slid a marker carefully between the pages and rose at once.

“Take to him imdiately.”

He had to cross nearly half the keep to reach the audience hall, his pace swift but never undignified. The fortress was quieter at this hour, though not silent. Even in the dead of night, Mangup possessed its own muted life: Guards changing posts, servants hurrying to and fro in whatever deeds were needed to keep the great Keep up and running.

Inside the hall he found only a select few assembled. Elder Trifon stood near the prince’s chair like so dried remnant of a better age. Lord Kostis was present as well, along with several of the senior commanders, all of them wearing that sa strained look n acquired when forced to think at inconvenient hours.

“Apologies for the lateness,” Zeno said as he entered.

“Zeno?” Lord Kostis asked, visibly surprised. “What are you doing here?”

It was a fair question. His station was still not high enough to be summoned to midnight councils of this sort. But that, naturally, was why he had made certain to be inford of any significant arrival at the keep before others thought to exclude him.

“You have received news from the Doux?” he asked, stepping neatly around the question.

He had not co all this way to be treated as an afterthought, and now that he was here, they could hardly dismiss him without making a scene of it.

“Gennadios should be arriving any mont-”

The great double doors groaned open, as if waiting for that precise mont.

Gennadios looked as grim as usual, and clad in what appeared at first glance to be a worn Genoese uniform. Zeno took in the details without staring.

He did not care to imagine what thods had carried the man through the enemy encirclent and up to Mangup’s gates. Experience had taught him not to ask such questions, as the answers were rarely pleasant. Gennadios did whatever he thought was necessary to see the mission through.

“My lords,” the veteran cut a low bow.

“Report, Gennadios, what is the condition in the army’s camp?” Lord Kostis asked, almost frantic in his need to know.

Gennadios eyed the empty throne, his aning plain.

“The Prince is currently indisposed and not willing to see to matters of state.” Trifon intoned, his dry, raspy voice punctuated by a wet cough.

Gennadios took only a mont to take in the news, and its undertones, before he spoke.

“The Doux’s army is near its limit,” he said. “They have sustained the brunt of the Genoese bombardnt, but the Italians are building a secondary fortification in the southern forest to cut us off from Kalamita’s supplies.”

He delivered it without preamble and without expression, the blunt force of the report made sharper by the calm with which he gave it. He went on to lay out, piece by piece, the current disposition and state of their camp, the negotiations they’d undertaken with the Genoese, and how exactly they’d accomplished both the ambush at Kalamita and the current standoff against the Italians.

Taken together, it was a remarkable account.

A series of unlikely successes, near-miraculous in places, and yet none of them sufficient to alter the grim arithtic now closing around them.

Zeno listened without interruption, and from his colleague’s dumbfounded expression he knew there would be no sudden inspiration on how to proceed moving forward coming from them.

“How long can the Doux and the army endure?” Zeno asked, cutting straight to the heart of the matter.

Gennadios answered at once. “A week, if the rains continue unabated and so new outbreak or crisis takes hold. A week and a half before supplies begin to reach their breaking point. Two weeks, perhaps a little more, before n are reduced to chewing leather.”

A murmur moved through the chamber at that, more felt than heard.

“Then we must act quickly,” one of the commanders said, with all the urgency of a man contributing nothing beyond the obvious.

Zeno ignored him.

“Roughly how many n have the Genoese assigned to this secondary fort?” he asked, keeping his attention fixed on Gennadios.

“Perhaps two hundred,” the bodyguard replied. His scarred face seed almost made for ill tidings; it gave every answer the look of sothing better kept a secret. “But they have suffered attrition as well. I personally observed only two of their fortifications, so I can’t na exact numbers, but I estimate they still have roughly fourteen hundred n around Mangup itself. Disease, skirmishes, and general losses have likely reduced their numbers from around nineteen hundred to sothing closer to seventeen.” he paused, letting the n take a mont to gather the information before he continued. “When you take in patrols, foraging parties, supply runs, and now this new secondary post. That leaves perhaps fifteen hundred concentrated around Mangup proper, assuming they still have the remnants of the rebels with them.”

Zeno placed a hand lightly to his chin and considered the matter. The number sounded formidable on its face. But numbers in isolation were misleading. Mangup was not so cramped hilltop redoubt. It was a plateau of nearly ninety hectares, vast enough that any encircling force found itself stretched thin, not because they had to cover every stretch of land around the fortress, but because the half a dozen approaches out of the plateau were strategically situated in the cardinal directions.

The Genoese needed not only to guard the approaches themselves, but to maintain connective lines between the principal camps. n spread in that way were stronger in appearance than in substance.

That was the first useful thought the report had yielded.

“What are you thinking, Zeno?” Lord Kostis asked.

The question was casually spoken, but Zeno did not miss its significance. It was a subtle thing, this willingness to turn toward him at the mont of uncertainty. His gradual efforts were at last producing the proper effect. Influence was seldom seized in one motion; it was accumulated by proving oneself useful at the exact monts when others most needed to lean on soone.

He let the silence stretch for a beat, not from hesitation, but because n valued conclusions more when they believed they had waited for them.

Then he raised his eyes from thought and looked back at the gathered council.

“There is an opportunity here, gentlen,” Zeno said at last. “A real one. We may yet put an end to this Italian nace, but only if our armies act in concert.”

He turned toward Gennadios, who stood motionless and attentive, as if he had been carved into the chamber for the sole purpose of delivering grim news.

“The eastern Genoese encampnt is their principal one,” Zeno continued. “It is the hinge upon which the rest of their operation turns.”

Then, just as sharply, he shifted his gaze. “What does the Doux intend to do?”

He knew his liege too well to believe the man would sit ekly in a rain-soaked camp and wait for hunger to kill him. The Doux was many things, but a craven was not one of them.

Gennadios held his look for a mont. His eyes were hard and unreadable. n like him were trained to hold their word to their last breath if need be. They didn’t hand over information easily, even when it seed innocuous.

“A distraction,” he said at last. “To then strike at their jugular.”

Zeno felt a flicker of satisfaction. So they had seen the sa weakness.

Good.

“Then we strike the eastern camp?” Lord Kostis asked. “Seize their supplies and withdraw?”

“No,” Zeno said.

There was a glint in his eye now, cold and intent.

“We take sothing of greater value.”

He turned toward the window. Beyond it, the storm still lingered over the plateau, and a sudden flash of white lightning tore across the sky. For an instant it lit the frescoes of the Sky Room in stark, ghostly brilliance.

Zeno watched the light fade, then spoke.

“We take their thunder.”

The next day

“So let see if I have understood correctly,” Baccio said.

His voice was soft, even pleasant, the calm tenor of a man making polite conversation. None of the n before him were deceived by it.

“A lone man entered our camp by feigning the condition of a wounded knight. He then murdered one of our soldiers, stole his armour, and walked out through the inner gate before the alarm was fully raised, as casually as if he were taking an evening stroll?”

The last of the light was dying in the courtyard, the evening sky sinking from gold into bruised blue. Before him, the sergeant and the houndmaster kept their eyes lowered.

They had served under Baccio long enough to know that he was not a man who spent his temper in shouting, but on sothing far worse.

“You left a single green recruit to watch him?” Baccio asked.

The sergeant swallowed. “He knew the pass word from three nights ago.”

“He spoke fluent Italian,” the handler added quickly, as if that might save him.

“Silence!”

Gian Carlos's roar cracked across the courtyard like a whip. Unlike Baccio, he made no effort to hide his fury. His face had gone red, and flecks of spittle flew from his mouth as he stepped forward.

“You do not speak unless spoken to, you witless bastards!”

He was livid, and with reason. A breach like this stained the whole company. In a rcenary corps, reputation was not rely pride. It was coin, bargaining power, survival. n hired La Compagnia because they were feared, disciplined, and difficult to fool. Incidents such as this invited dangerous doubt.

Baccio let Gian Carlos’s outburst settle over the courtyard before continuing in the sa asured tone as before.

“From this point onward, any unidentified soldier approaching camp, wounded or otherwise, remains outside until he nas a man who can personally identify him. If no such man can be found, he is to be killed.”

He did not raise his voice. He never needed to. Years of leading rcenaries had taught Baccio that discipline must be imdiate and instinctive. If his n could not even keep still and listen when he spoke, then they were not fit to wear his colours.

“Punishnt for disobeying this order,” he went on, “will be swift.”

He lifted a hand.

His squire stepped forward carrying a thick, ugly club of hardwood, more brutal in appearance than any formal lash. Baccio let the sight of it settle where it needed to.

“Five strikes for the Sergeant and the n on duty,” he said. “The Houndmaster forfeits three months’ pay.” In truth he would rather issue equal punishnt, but so lines had to be drawn when you led both commoners and nobles. You could not treat the two alike.

The sentence landed with all the weight of a warning to every man present.

Then the houndmaster’s face darkened to a dangerous purple. He tore his arm free from the soldiers moving to seize him.

“Any man could have made that mistake,” he spat. “This is bullshit!”

Gian Carlos turned on him as if a hurricane, face contorted in a way that promised violent retribution for his insolence.

Baccio raised a hand, and the n holding the sergeant stopped at once.

Then he stepped forward himself.

“Any man could have made the mistake,” Baccio said, his voice low enough that only those nearest could hear it. “But you were the one who did.”

The houndmaster glared back with naked fury. Baccio had seen that look often enough over the years. Entitlent had a particular shape to it, and noblen wore it more naturally than any others. It was a familiar sickness in every respectable company. The sa lesser lords and land-starved sons who brought ambition, horses, and useful connections were so often the very n who strained against discipline the mont it pinched them personally.

“Pack your things,” Baccio said.

For the first ti, the man’s anger broke into confusion. “What?”

“You are out of the company.”

The houndmaster stared at him as if he had misheard. Then his face hardened. “My n will go with .”

There was hatred in his eyes now, and the pathetic confidence of a man still imagining himself important.

“If they wish to follow a penniless wandering noble, they are welco to it,” Baccio said.

He had already begun to turn away when the word struck ho.

“Penniless?” the man repeated, his thoughts finally catching up to what Baccio was implying. Then outrage flooded in. “You cannot do this-”

He reached for Baccio’s wrist.

It was a foolish mistake.

Baccio struck him across the face with a hard backhand before the fingers could close, then pulled his arm free with visible distaste. His bodyguards fell on the houndmaster at once, driving him down with fists and boots before he could recover his balance.

Baccio did not watch long. Incidents like these were common enough that veterans like him would barely bat an eye.

Instead, he turned back to his squire and took the club from him, weighing it once in his hand. It was an ugly thing, heavy and serviceable. After a brief mont’s thought, he looked across the gathered officers.

“Annibale.”

His protegé looked up, surprised to hear his na. Until then he had stood sowhat apart from the little spectacle, wearing the aloof, faintly bored expression of one accustod to violence but not especially entertained by it.

“Really?” Annibale asked.

“This is part of command,” Baccio said simply, and held the club out to him.

Annibale looked at the weapon as though it were sothing distasteful that had washed up at his feet, but after a pause, he took it.

“If you insist,” he sighed, and set to the grim task.

…

“Theodorans!” the lookout shouted. “Movent from the river. They are sorting out!”

At once the mood shifted. Whatever small drama had filled the yard vanished before the greater business of war.

Baccio wasted no breath on surprise.

“To your positions,” he ordered.

The officers moved at once, shouting for n, relaying orders, rousing those not already ard. Across the camp, disciplined confusion sprang into life. Torches were lifted. Helts buckled on. Sergeants began cursing n into proper formation.

“They are coming out?” Gian Carlo asked, astonished as he hurried alongside him. “They are outnumbered. What in God’s na do they think they are doing?”

Baccio did not answer imdiately.

Nearby, Aniballe had the look of a man almost pleased by the interruption. There was a dangerous brightness in him now.

“Finally,” he murmured under his breath. “I was beginning to get bored, my friend.”

Then, louder, for Baccio's benefit, he added, “This is no true attack. I suspect it is a distraction of so kind.”

Baccio thought the sa. “Keep ssengers ready by the horse relay station. I want news if there is another layer to this plan.” He ordered Gian Carlos, who saluted and made for the building.

When the Theodorans ca on, they did so with caution rather than fury. Their movent had the shape of an assault, but not its conviction. They pressed where they could be seen, skirmished sharply enough to hold attention, and fell back before committing too deeply. From the Genoese side, it was covered well enough to demand a proper response. No commander with sense could simply ignore n advancing from the fortress. Yet the whole affair had the faintly false air of a performance ant to occupy rather than break.

When Genoa had amassed enough of a force upon the walls and threatened to sortie out and give battle to the Theodorans, they simply retreated back into their encampnt, having accomplished nothing particular of note.

Baccio watched the lines shift in the failing light and felt his suspicion deepen. n did not throw themselves out from a besieged fortress for amusent. If the Theodorans had gone to the trouble of mounting such a distraction, then sothing else, sowhere else, mattered more.

He did not yet know what.

And that annoyed him to no end.

The Doux retired to his tent late that night. Outside, the rain had finally stopped, sothing he needed to remain the sa.

Inside, Panagiotis let the tent flap fall shut behind him and did not bother turning fully toward the shadows before speaking.

“How did it go?”

“That Zeno is an interesting boy.” Gennadios’s voice ca out of the gloom as though the darkness itself had chosen to answer.

A mont later, he stepped just enough into the light to beco a man again, mud-splashed and composed, as if slipping through the Genoese encirclent twice in darkness were no more troubleso than crossing a courtyard.

Panagiotis regarded him in silence for a beat.

He had long ago given up asking by what exact thods Gennadios accomplished these things. He wondered if the Genoese would ever figure out that the entire purpose of the sortie had been to buy the opportunity for Gennadios to slip past once again.

“What does he have planned?” Panagiotis asked, voice tense.

The question lingered in the dim tent.

Gennadios smiled. It was a cruel, jagged thing. A crisscross of scars that glinted in the low light.

This might be the long-awaited chance to break the cage the Genoese had built around them.

And if such a chance truly existed, he ant to seize it.